


spontaneous human combustion

by strigastrigastriga (krasnyj)



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Climbing Class, Cussing, Depression, Drug Use, F/F, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Not A Fix-It, Self-Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-12 02:46:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7081780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krasnyj/pseuds/strigastrigastriga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh can’t keep track of what’s real these days. it doesn't affect The Plan, but it sure complicates whatever’s going on between him and Chris. if there actually is anything, even.</p>
            </blockquote>





	spontaneous human combustion

**Author's Note:**

> what was going on in the year that passed? who is Josh when he's at home?

 

 

 

 

> Perversely, art ends up destroying that which it wished to preserve. In the case of the broken-hearted poet, why write a poem? Why not jump off a bridge?  
>  -Lloyd Jones, introduction to _The Long Green Shore_ by John Hepworth

¿

  
It’s amazing the way a year passes when you’re not paying attention.  
  
Josh has been lying in bed without moving much for about five days when he hears familiar voices. He’s half-drowsing, heavily drugged, and he’s not entirely sure whether he was dreaming, or the noise is what woke him from a dream. He stops staring at the ceiling and checks his phone, still unable to interact with anyone and not surprised that he’s the last to know that the twins were found. The room is quiet now, and empty, but he’s quite sure he heard their voices out in the hall. His phone is dead, so he has to plug it in and wait for a while to turn it on. He opens his door and peers out, but the house is empty and still. He goes over to his desk and flips his computer open. His body feels heavy and foreign once he sets it in motion. There’s nothing, though, no news. Just the tribute wall on their Facebook pages.  
  
But he heard them.  
  
He has three hundred and some messages, when his phone finally turns on; he ignores everything. To Chris, he writes “what’s up.” To Sam, “hope ur ok.” No other words occur to him. Instead of texting back, Chris calls him. After a long hesitation, Josh answers.  
  
Chris comes over later. They order pizza. Chris says “you reek, dude,” all casual and shit, so Josh showers while they’re waiting. He steps out in his towel, thinking that he just heard Beth saying something to Chris. He wants to ask Chris what’s going on, but there’s no one else in the room, and for the first time Josh thinks that he’s losing his mind. He hasn’t even said anything yet, so he's just standing there in his towel, water dripping down his back, and Chris is sitting there, thumbs paused over his phone, giving Josh this startled look like he knows Josh is crazy, too.  
  
“What?” Josh asks, and then he says “My eyes are up here,” in an irritated falsetto. It should make Chris laugh, but…  
  
“No, no,” Chris stammers, “Sorry for staring, I just, it’s, haven’t seen you in a while.” He’s blushing. “You’ve lost weight, bro.”  
  
Suddenly, Josh feels self-conscious. He mumbles something and withdraws. When he comes back, he’s wearing layers of shirts, bulky. The pizza arrives and they watch Night at the Museum 3, which is stupid, but whatever. Chris takes a picture of him eating pizza and snapchats it with the caption “He’s alive!”

¿ 

  
Hannah and Beth are starting to decay. He never knows when he’s going to catch sight of their mottled, rotting faces. Their eyes are white and their teeth are starting to show through where their flesh has fallen off. It’s not like he hasn’t seen the same and worse in a million horror films, it’s just that they’re so angry at him. They think he wanted them to die, and he’s starting to blame himself, and it makes him want to crawl out of his own skin. He could have, should have been a better brother. Even when they're not there, he still catches their whispers. He keeps losing his appetite, keeps hoping that sleep will make it better instead of worse.  
  
That’s where the plan comes from. Everyone who’s responsible is going to spend just one evening living through a nightmare with him. They’ve moved on with their lives, they think it’s over. They need to know what it feels like when everything hurts and everything is wrong and you want to wake up but you can’t, because you’re already awake. What's just a concept quickly blossoms into a deranged scheme with a very high budget.  
  
His parents won’t just let him keep spending money like it’s water — they don’t like any kind of extreme behavior, don’t like it when he doesn’t get out of bed for days on end, when he seems manic, when he looks like he’s listening to someone who’s not there, when he lies to them about where he’s been when he was supposed see the doctor. He gets a job at this local coffee shop, he’s a _barista_. He comes up with little puns for their sandwich board and people think he's funny, think he's fine. His body gets so good at going on autopilot; he can open and close, clean the machines, make the specialty drinks, all mechanically, all without thinking about anything. He smiles and tells little jokes, diligently sweeps people’s trash like he’s not driving a car that cost more than he’ll ever make working here.  
  
His coworkers like him. They like it when Sam comes in to hang out, because they can stare at Sam and she’s so focused on Josh that she doesn’t notice — or doesn’t care enough to call them out on it. She’s pretty, but more importantly, she was _there_. They know what happened on the mountain, of course. But they don’t know enough, they haven’t cracked the bone open and sucked out the marrow. They want Sam to talk about it, they want her to start crying. They want Josh to lose his mind, to pull an espresso machine out of the wall and throw it through the front window. They want him to vomit up everything that wasn’t printed in the papers, all of his grief, every dirty little detail.  
  
Or maybe that’s all in his mind. Maybe they just want him to do his job.  
  
He finds out that Mike and Emily split through Facebook. It doesn’t give him any satisfaction. Sam mentions it, too, when she stops in on a morning run. She always takes a long time to look at everything on the menu, like she doesn’t know she’s going to order a small house roast with soy milk. All of their beans are ethically sourced — she’s the one who introduced Josh to this place, actually. Sometimes she gets fruit, sometimes muesli. No wonder she always looks so healthy.  
  
He remembers their sleepovers, Sam and Beth taking their yoga mats out onto the patio early in the morning and following Pilates videos on YouTube. Standing real close while they made açaí bowls, always smiling or laughing, even when there was nothing to be happy about but being with one another. Hannah snapping at them for being obnoxious, then feeling anxious about being a brat. Sam trying to convince the twins to try her vegan cookies, which got a bit crispy in the oven. Beth playing with Sam's hair while they watched Netflix. Sam helping Hannah with the aftercare for her tattoo, Sam and Beth watching Hannah’s tennis matches together. Sam now, alone.  
  
He’s the only one she felt like she could talk to when they were gone, her best friend and her girlfriend. She’s spent almost as much time as he has revisiting their pages on Facebook, their Instagram profiles, making that fierce face she makes when she’s trying not to cry.  
  
She blamed everyone who was a part of the prank, rightfully, but it made her awful, all bitter and withered, which was wrong for Sam. He’s the one who took her aside to talk, the one who told her they couldn’t have known what would happen. Was it nice? No, it was shitty, they’re shitty people, but they’re not killers. It's like she needed him to give her permission to live again. She’s going to a good school in the fall, running track, and she hasn’t texted Josh at 3 a.m. in a couple months. He's still awake, usually, but no one needs to know.  
  
She comes to check up on him like she’s the strong one. She has no way to know that he’s looking out for her now, the way he should have for his sisters.  
  
So, he works. And he saves money until he needs to spend it, and then he can tell his parents, “Look, I’m so normal. I have a job. I have some ideas for an artistic project.” He can acknowledge that he’s buying some creepy shit, but his explanation is, “I’m channeling all of my negative energy into creation.” They eat it up. He has the balls to ask his dad for advice on some of the things he has planned. He can even tell them about some of the conversations he’s had with his doctor: they’re exploring his anxiety and fear. Sometimes it feels like the sessions don’t last very long, but he’s learning a lot. He's using a lot of the material, he can say, art is therapeutic. It's a process.  
  
And sometimes, when no one’s around, he goes into Hannah’s or Beth’s bedroom (left untouched, as if after all this time they could still come home), and falls asleep on their beds. That’s where he finds the most peace. His museum-morgue. He has some of his best ideas here, deep in his dreams.

  
¿

 

One time, one of the many times when he was taking pills and drinking, he propositioned Chris. He woke up with bruises on his neck and his best friend, naked, in his bed. He staggered into the bathroom to vomit and then back into bed. When he woke up again, Chris was gone. Since then, it’s been Chris and Ashley, this big deal Josh keeps making, because he totally supports his best friend finding happiness and there’s nothing weird between them. _Do you feel used?_ he wonders. He doesn’t even really know what happened, because he just apologizes to Chris every time his friend tries to bring it up, cuts him off, “no homo,” because he thinks that’s what Chris wants to hear, or maybe what he needs to hear. Because he doesn’t want it to ruin their friendship, which it’s doing anyway, since there never used to be something they couldn’t talk about.

Sometimes he imagines that he’s a character in a movie and if he can just figure out what part he’s playing, he can pick up the script, and all of a sudden everything’s going to make sense. He could be so good at playing himself that he’s going to become a real person.

Sometimes he catches Chris staring at him and he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to feel, what Chris thinks. It would be really great if he could trust his feelings, but he’s a fucking crazy person. He stops popping benzos and starts smoking pot, tries to slow down, chill out.

Chris smokes, too, and smoking together becomes one of the ways to smooth over everything.   
  
When it happens again, he's not ready for it. They’ve eaten a lot of hot Cheetos and Oreos and _Donnie Darko_ is playing in the background and Chris is grinding his hips against Josh’s while he presses sloppy kisses to Josh’s general mouth area, his hands up Josh’s shirt.  
  
“Chill, bro,” Josh says, putting his hands on Chris’s shoulders. "I'm watching the movie."  
  
"You are such a _dick_." Chris scowls, leaning back, and he looks so pissed off that Josh can’t choke back a shrill giggle, which makes Chris bristle: “This is serious, man. I’m trying to tell you something.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. I know,” Josh says, "Come here." And he watches everything that follows like he’s not a part of it. He doesn't expect to get hard like he does when his tongue is in Chris's mouth. He’s critical of his thrusting motions, of how poorly Chris’s face is lit, of his own animal grunting. Chris’s belly is pale and soft; Josh has a flat ass. No one would pay to watch this. Chris wants to hold Josh after, and it’s fucking weird. He’s never thought of himself as a little spoon. He can feel Chris's lips on the back of his neck just before he drifts off, and he gets this peaceful feeling.  
  
He wakes up on the couch and the TV’s on the menu screen. He doesn't feel good anymore, like he ate too much, and he’s alone. He suddenly has this horrible idea that he’s been alone the whole time, that he just had a wet dream about fucking his best friend. Or did Chris just leave him here? He vacillates between thinking "What the hell?" about himself and aiming it at Chris, back and forth, angry and ashamed and kind of horny and confused and desperate. He tries to find some evidence, something that would prove or disprove it, but there's nothing. Yeah, all the food is gone. He and Chris were texting earlier about watching movies together and "handling the scandal," which is what they've been calling their smoke sessions, but there's no "I'm here" or "sorry I bailed." He can’t ask, because if nothing happened, what is Chris going to think? He suddenly just wants to sleep.

All of a sudden every conversation he has with Chris is a mindfuck. He can't let Chris know that he thinks sometimes there's a Chris who isn't Chris. Beth and Hannah linger, and they're more and more restless and vicious and decayed the closer the anniversary is. He drags through every day, exhausted even when he starts sleeping ten or twelve hours a day. Sometimes drinking helps, even though he made this promise to himself that he was going to stop. The only thing that really keeps him going is his project, his baby, his absolution; finishing it is going to finally set him free.

¿

  
He’s in a better mood than he’s been in in a year when he gets up to the cabin. Matt, Emily, and Jessica start tearing into one another almost immediately. Sam seems tense, impatient. She misses the ouija board, and maybe that’s a kindness, with a boner bonus: the towel. It’s a relief when the saw cuts him in half. He’s so unprepared for it, how light he suddenly feels. The noise in his head comes to a thundering crescendo, and then it breaks. He doesn’t think about the stunned look on Chris’s face when the saw came at Josh anyway, the despair and confusion, like maybe he picked Ashley to die. Chris’s expression when he was staring at his best friend’s intestines: that was real, right? Did the camera catch it? Will everyone else see the same thing Josh saw?

That sounds like someone else’s problem. Josh no longer has to think. Josh is dead. In the mask, he’s no one, he’s a maniac. He doesn’t have to try to get it right any more.

 

.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> I just recently watched someone play this game (in German, actually) and I enjoyed it way more than I was expecting to (I know I'm late to the party). I wanted to write like a fix-it, wendibros, nobody dies, happy sweet story and so instead I wrote this trash.


End file.
